A 

LABORING 
NATION 


book: 


THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  ILLINOIS 


LIBRARY 

331 

G?d6t 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2015 


https://archive.org/details/laboringnationOOgene 


bidaslrial  RetrtioaB  \ktft. 


A  LABORING  NATION 


Additional  copies  may  be  obtained  from  the 
Publicity  Department,  Nela  Park, 
Cleveland,  O. 


FOREWORD 


^    r  M  IHIS  world  needs  work.    It  needs  work 
Ji  faora  everybody^  work  through  all  the  work- 
^         ing  days.    It  is,  in  sober,  literal  truth,  a 
''workaday  world,''  not  for  a  group  or  a  class,  but 
^  for  everyone.    And  here  in  America,  where  the 
^   habit  of  work  has  been  well-nigh  universal  since 
^   man's  toil  first  began  to  wrest  a  living  from  the 
wilderness,  it  is  to  this  universality  of  work  that 
we  owe  our  greatness. 

About  this  matter  of  work,  two  great  facts  stand 
out:  Nearly  everyone  has  to  work.  And  nearly 
everyone  wants  to  work.  The  exceptions  are  so 
few  that  we  can  discard  them,  indeed,  in  the  general 
statement,  and  allow  them  merely  to  be  conspicuous 
as  exceptions.  In  this  country  certainly,  and  to 
.  a  great  extent  throughout  the  civilized  world,  practi- 
^S\^ally  everyone  has  a  job,  and  practically  everyone 
has,  deep  within  him,  the  ineradicable  instinct  of 
workmanship.  For  the  community,  our  work  is 
needed.  For  ourselves,  we  are  not  happy  in  idleness. 

As  one  writer  puts  it,  "almost  everyone  in 
America  belongs  to  the  working  class."  Another 
writer,  an  investigator  of  industrial  conditions,  has 
pointed,  out  that  there  is  more  real  difference  be- 
tween skilled  and  unskilled  labor  than  between 
"Labor"  and  "Capital."  We  are  all  workers;  we 
differ  merely  in  the  kind  of  work  we  do. 


A  Laboring  Nation 

But  it  is  not  enough  that  we  are  all  working. 
There  are  things  about  work  that  we  must  see  and 
understand.  "Where  there  is  no  vision  the  people 
perish,^'  and  we  are  sorely  in  need  of  a  wider  vision 
nowadays.  We  need  a  vision  in  this  matter  of 
work.  We  need  to  realize  that,  for  ourselves  and 
for  others,  work  is  interesting.  We  need  to  grasp 
the  necessity  for  working  together. 

On  the  question  of  the  inherent  inter estingness 
of  work,  we  should  respect  the  other  man's  instinct 
for  workmanship,  and  comprehend  the  satis- 
faction of  our  own.  "We''  does  not  mean  merely 
"Capital"  and  it  does  not  mean  merely  "Labor:" 
it  means  both;  it  means  everybody. 

In  this  day  of  highly  specialized  mechanical 
technique,  the  laborer  often  fails — through  no  fault 
of  his  own — to  understand  the  value  and  the 
essential  interest  of  the  thing  he  is  doing;  he  is  doing 
creative  work,  work  that  could  be  full  of  a  big  sat- 
isfaction; but  under  present  conditions  of  special- 
ized machine  manufacture,  it  is  not  always  easy 
for  him  to  see  this.  Upon  the  employer,  who  does 
see  it,  rests  the  responsibility  of  showing  it  to  him. 
Students  of  present-day  industrial  "unrest"  say 
that  much  dull  discontent,  misunderstanding,  and 
consequent  ill-feeling  is  caused  simply  by  the 

6 


A  Laboring  Nation 

employer's  failure  to  take  the  laborer's  instinct  of 
workmanship  into  account,  to  explain  the  value 
of  his  work  and  to  stimulate  his  creative  interest. 

On  the  other  handy  both  "CapitaV  and  "Labor' 
often  have  a  way  of  thinking — or  of  speaking  and 
writing  as  if  they  thought — that  "the  other  fellow" 
is  merely  "out  for  the  coin."  The  manual  worker 
calls  the  capitalist  a  "thief  or  a  "parasite."  The 
capitalist  thinks  the  laborer  cares  for  nothing  but 
his  pay  envelope,  and  frequently  looks  upon  him 
as  a  "shirk."  Too  often,  in  individual  cases  on 
both  sides,  this  may  be  true.  But  it  is  not  generally 
true.  It  cannot  be  thrown  as  an  accusation  at 
either  side  as  a  group.  The  employer,  manager, 
capitalist,  knows  that  he  himself  works  hard  and 
is  interested  in  his  work,  quite  aside  from  the  ques- 
tion of  "profits;"  he  ought  to  be  just  enough,  al- 
ways, to  understand  that  the  laborer  is  made  of 
the  same  human  material  as  himself,  and  that  the 
instinct  for  work  and  workmanship  is  something 
big  and  broad  and  human.  The  laborer,  on  his 
part,  ought  to  realize  both  that  the  employer  and 
the  capitalist  are  working,  and  that  their  work  is 
necessary,  just  as  is  his  own.  It  is  to  point  out 
some  of  the  concrete  details  of  this  universality  of 


A  Laboring  Nation 

ivork,  of  the  need  for  work,  and  of  the  work  instinct, 
that  we  are  publishing  this  book. 

We  shall  never  solve  the  human  problems  that 
face  us  unless  we  succeed,  in  this  matter  as  in 
others,  in  understanding  each  other  and  respecting 
each  other  as  human  beings.  And  when  we  get  as 
far  as  that,  the  next  necessary  point  in  our  vision 
is  easy:  we  must  see  the  need,  not  only  for  every- 
one's working,  but  for  everyone's  working  together. 
Present  day  production  is  achieved  by  machines — 
but  these  machines  must  be  controlled  by  men. 
And  unless  men  agree  in  their  management  of  the 
machine,  unless  they  work  together,  the  machine 
produces  nothing.  During  the  imr,  ivhen  the  great 
flame  of  a  common  heroic  purpose  fused  our 
strength  into  07ie  tremendous  effort,  the  eyes  of  the 
2vhole  world  turned  with  admiration  upon  what 
America  urns  able  to  do.  When  that  flame  died, 
lohen  we  forgot  our  essential  oneness,  when  we 
began  to  quarrel  over  the  management  of  our 
machine,  our  loork  became  once  more,  as  one  man 
phases  it,  "crippled  by  confusion.'' 

We  need  the  vision  now. 

For  we  must  all  work.  We  mustfulflll  our  own 
tasks,  and  respect  each  other's. 

We  must  work  together. 
Cleveland,  Ohio,  April,  1922  Terry  and  Tremaiiie 

8 


A  LABORING  NATION 


SOME  years  ago  a  European  visitor  was  giving 
an  American  business  man  his  impressions 
of  the  United  States.  'Tt's  a  wonderful 
country/'  he  said,  ''but  there  is  one  thing  here 
that  seems  strange  to  me:  you  have  no  leisure 
class." 

''What  do  you  mean,  leisure  class  asked  the 
American. 

The  visitor  hesitated  to  find  just  the  right 
words.  Then  he  said,  slowly,  "I  mean  a  class, 
or  group,  of  people  who  don't  seem  to  feel  that 
it  is  necessary  to  work.  Wherever  I  go  in 
America,  I  find  everyone  working.  No  matter 
how  rich  a  man  is,  he  goes  on  working  just  the 
same.  It  seems  to  me  that  everybody  in  Amer- 
ica works.  Nobody  seems  to  think  of  such  a 
thing  as  just  living  without  working.  Every- 
body is  busy  at  something.  That  is  what  I  mean 
by  saying  that  you  have  no  leisure  class,  no 
group  of  gentlemen  of  leisure,  if  I  may  use  that 
term." 

The  American  smiled,  "Oh,  we  have  a  leisure 
class,  all  right,"  he  said,  "but  I  guess  you  haven't 

9 


A  Laboring  Nation 

happened  to  come  across  any  of  them.  You  see, 
we  haven't  many  of  them,  and  we  don't  say 
much  about  them,  and  a  visitor  wouldn't  be 
very  hkely  to  meet  any  of  them,  anyhow.  We 
have  them,  floating  about  here  and  there.  Only, 
you  see,  we  don't  call  them  gentlemen.  We  call 
them  tramps." 

It  is  probable  that  in  these  years  of  upheaval. 
Everybody  the  uumbcr  of  pcoplc  in  the  older  European 
Tramps  countrics  whosc  ideal  was  to  ''live  without  work- 
ing" has  shrunk  to  a  much  smaller  figure!  But 
in  the  United  States,  the  comments  of  the  two 
men  we  have  quoted  have  always  been  true.  We 
have  never  had  what  the  visitor  called  a  ''leisure 
class."  We  have  a  great  many  rich  men,  but 
nearly  all  of  them  work.  America  is  a  nation  of 
workers,  and  it  is  because  it  is  a  nation  of  work- 
ers that  it  is  so  great  a  nation  industrially.  And 
we  are  no  moie  proud  of  the  few  rich  men  who 
live  lives  of  idleness  than  we  are  of  the  ragged 
roadsters  who  beg  their  vagrant  way  from  door 
to  door.  Everybody  works  in  America — every- 
body except  the  tramps ! 

And  this  matter  of  work  is  really  more  a 
matter  of  interest  and  desire  than  of  money. 
Does  that  sound  like  a  wild  statement  ?  We  are 
going  to  look  into  it  in  detail.  Meanwhile  we 
may  note  that  the  tramp  has  no  money — but 
he  manages  to  keep  alive.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  millionaire  president  of  a  great  corporation 
is  rich  beyond  the  dreams  of  avarice — but  he  is 

10 


A  Laboring  Nation 

at  his  office  every  day.  The  average  human 
being — and  that  means  an  enormously  large 
proportion  of  men  and  women — is  blessed  with 
a  natural  instinct  for  work  and  a  natural  desire 
to  stand  on  his  own  feet.  The  average  man, 
rich  or  poor,  is  both  industrious  and  honest. 

A  poor  man  could  be  a  beggar  or  a  thief,  but 
he  doesn't  want  to.  A  rich  man  could  be  a 
waster  and  a  parasite,  but  he  prefers  to  live  a  self- 
respecting  life  in  the  world  of  active  men.  For 
each  of  them  work  is  the  normal  thing  to  do. 
Deep  down  in  the  heart  of  nearly  every  human 
being  lies  the  sound  instinct  of  workmanship. 
And  our  life  in  America  has  tended  to  encourage 
and  emphasize  this  instinct.  We  have  never 
had  a  ''class"  of  idle  men,  inheritors  of  great 
''landed"  fortunes  who  from  generation  to  gen- 
eration lived  on  the  money  that  their  fathers 
left.  So  it  is  that  here  in  America,  more  than 
in  any  other  country,  the  average  man,  rich  or 
poor,  is  a  worker. 

And,  rich  or  poor,  he  has  a  job. 

Of  course  the  great  majority  of  people  work 
to  earn  a  living.  And  many  of  us,  who  have 
to  work  hard  because  we  and  our  families  are 
dependent  upon  our  month-by-month  earnings, 
think  that  if  we  were  just  "rich"  we  wouldn't 
work  at  all.  And  yet,  somehow,  it  doesn't 
turn  out  that  way.  Have  our  rich  men  stopped 
working  ?    Mighty  few ! 

There  are  two  great  reasons  why  rich  men 


11 


A  Laboring  Nation 
Interested   work.    One  is  that  they  are  interested  in  what 

Needed  th^  are  doing. 

The  other  is  that  they  are  doing  necessary 
work. 

But  before  we  begin  to  examine  why  they  do 
it,  let  us  look  a  little  closer  at  this  statement 
that  they  do!    Are  we  sure  it's  true.^ 

We  hear  so  much,  nowadays,  of  men  who 
''don't  have  to  work,"  of  ''capitalists"  who 
don't  have  to  do  anything  but  "clip  coupons" 
and  "draw  dividends,"  while  "laborers"  toil 
all  day  long!  And  of  course  it  is  entirely  true 
that  most  men  have  to  earn  wages  or  salaries 
in  order  to  support  themselves,  while  some  other 
men  have  so  much  money  that  they  could  live 
in  comfort  all  their  lives  without  ever  "earning" 
a  cent.  They  are  not  obliged,  these  "rich" 
people,  to  work  for  money.  Do  they  work  for 
something  else  ? 

Workers  All 
The  present  writer  once  had  occasion  to  "inter- 
view" Elbert  H.  Gary,  president  of  the  Board  of 
Directors  of  the  United  States  Steel  Corpora- 
tion. Judge  Gary  is  an  old  man,  and  a  very 
rich  one.  He  has  been  very  rich  for  many, 
many  years.  He  is  one  of  the  first  men  that 
most  of  us  think  of  when  we  hear  the  word 
"capitalist."  Judge  Gary  is  one  of  those  men 
who  "don't  have  to  work."  But  when  the  vis- 
itor called  upon  Judge  Gary  it  was  not  in  his 


Gary's 
Job 


12 


A  Laboring  Nation 

home,  or  in  any  other  place  of  ''leisure";  it 
was  in  his  office  on  lower  Broadway.  Outside 
was  an  office  boy,  and  in  a  small  room  there  was 
probably  a  stenographer  or  two,  and  in  one  office 
was  Judge  Gary's  secretary;  and  they  were  all 
busy.  And  in  his  own  office,  one  of  America's 
most  famous  capitalists  was  seated  at  his  desk, 
busy  at  his  day's  work,  like  all  the  rest.  And  the 
point  of  that  story  is  not  that  there  was  anything 
surprising  about  it,  but  that  there  wasn't!  Of 
course  the  president  of  the  Board  of  Directors  of 
the  United  States  Steel  Corporation  was  working. 
What  else  would  he  be  doing  .^^  What  is  the 
president  of  a  Board  of  Directors  for  ? 
Gary  has  a  job. 

It  also  happened  that  the  present  writer  once 
had  occasion  to  talk  with  Thomas  A.  Edison, 
and  journeyed  out  at  an  early  hour  to  Orange, 
where  he  fives  and  has  his  laboratory.  Was 
Edison  at  home.^  No,  indeed!  He  was  in  his 
laboratory,  working,  surrounded  by  other  men 
who  were  working.  Edison  is  an  old  man,  too, 
and  he  has  worked  all  his  life.  He  has  amassed 
a  fortune.  He  is  personally  ''free"  to  do 
as  he  likes  every  minute  of  the  day.  And  he 
goes  on  working.    That  is  what  he  fikes  to  do. 

There  is  no  one  who  realizes  both  the  impor-  Edison's 
tance  and  the  satisfaction  of  work  more  keenly 
than  this  great  inventor,  and  there  is  no  one 
whose  life  illustrates  more  plainly  the  value  of  a 
man's  work  to  himself  and  to  the  world.  If 


13 


A  Laboring  Nation 

Edison  had  only  worked  long  enough  and  hard 
enough,  to  lay  up  some  money  and   take  it  easy 
for  the  rest  of  his  life,  we  can  see  for  ourselves 
that  he  would  have  lost  an  enormous  amount  ot 
interest  and  satisfaction  from  the  passing  years. 
But  we  can  see  just  as  plainly,  too,  that  the 
country  would  have  lost  far  more     We  are  the 
richer  for  more  conveniences  and  luxuries  than 
we  can  quickly  count,  because  Edison  went  on 
working.    This  is  more  markedly  true  of  Edison 
than  of  most  men,  of  course,  because  Edison  is  a 
great  genius  who  has  done  a  peculiar  individual 
work.    But  in  some  degree  it  is  true  of  all  our 
busy  rich  men.    The  country  needs  their  work, 
iust  as  it  needs  the  work  of  the  coal-miner  or  the 
steel-worker  or  the  "reamer"  m  the  shipyards 
It  isn't  a  matter  of  their  personal  fortunes;  it  is 
something  far  bigger  than  that. 

To  go  back  to  Edison  as  an  outstanding  type. 
TICK  AND  "When  Thomas  A.  Edison  is  bent  on  reahzmg 
Results  j  j^-^  -^^^g^  ^is  absorption  in  his  work 

exemplifies  Emerson's  dictum,  'Nothing  great 
was  ever  accomplished  without  enthusiasm. 
He  shuts  himself  away  from  all  interruption  in 
his  laboratory.  He  works  for  hours  oblnaous 
to  everything  but  his  idea.  Even  the  demands  of 
his  body  for  food  and  sleep  do  not  rise  above  the 
threshold  of  consciousness.  Edison  himself  says 
that  great  achievement  is  a  result,  not  ot  gieat 
ge^u!,  but  of  just  this  kind  of  concentration 
in  work.    And  until  the  mediocre  man  has 


CONCENTRA 
TION  AND 


14 


A  Laboring  Nation 

worked  as  Edison  has,  he  cannot  prove  the  con- 
trary. Mr.  Edison  has  results  to  prove  the 
value  of  his  way  of  thinking.  Even  our  most 
expert  statistician  and  mathematician  would 
find  it  difficult  to  calculate  the  amount  of  material 
wealth  this  one  worker  has  added  to  humanity's 
store.  In  the  unseen  but  higher  values  in 
culture,  in  knowledge,  and  in  greater  joy  of  liv- 
ing for  millions  of  people,  there  are  even  greater 
results.  Other  men  of  the  past  and  present,  in 
every  phase  of  activity,  have  demonstrated  that 
Edison  s  utter  abandonment  to  his  task  is  the 
keynote  of  efficiency  and  achievement, 
Mr.  Edison  is  doing  work  for  which  he  is 
supremely  fitted.  He  shows  his  fitness  by  doing 
it  supremely  well."* 

At  the  present  time  Edison,  who  is  seventy- 
five  years  old,  is  still  putting  in  from  twelve  to 
sixteen  hours  of  work  a  day — sometimes  more. 
And  the  last  thing  he  does  every  night  is  to  map 
out  his  ''problems,"  as  he  calls  them,  for  the 
next  day.  One  morning  not  long  ago  he  said, 
in  reply  to  a  question,  that  that  particular  day's 
calendar  held  fifty-seven  items  of  work! 

We  have  always  known  that  a  man  must  work 
to  get  to  the  top.  But  it  is  just  as  true  that  he 
goes  on  working  when  he  gets  there! 

Sometimes  he  works  harder  than  he  ever 
worked  in  his  life. 

♦Katherine  M.  H.  Blackford,  M.  D.,  and  Arthur  Newcomb,  "The  Job,  The  Man, 
and  The  Boss"  (Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.).    (Italics  ours.) 


15 


A  Laboring  Nation 

B.  C.  Forbes,  editor  of  'Torbes'  Magazine/' 
and  author  of  ''Keys  to  Success,"  ''Men  Who 
are  Making  America,"  and  other  books  of  the 
same  kind,  a  student  of  men,  a  student  of  busi- 
ness, an  authority  on  this  subject  of  success  and 
achievement,  was  talking  the  matter  over  a 
few  weeks  ago.  Said  Mr.  Forbes: 
He  Goes  on  "Do  rich  men  work  ?  Well,  I  should  say  they 
Working  ;  ^j^^^  p^^j^^-  J  always  think  of  a  story 

that  seems  to  me  typical:  the  elder  J.  Pierpont 
Morgan  was  once  asked  by  a  friend  why  he 
went  on  working  so  hard  when  he  was  so  very 
rich,  and  no  longer  young.  Without  looking  up 
from  his  desk  Mr.  Morgan  said,  'When  did 
your  father  retire.^'  The  friend  was  a  little 
puzzled,  but  replied,  quickly  enough,  'My 
father  retired  in  1908.'  'When  did  he  die.^' 
Mr.  Morgan  asked.  The  younger  man  hesi- 
tated a  moment,  and  then  he  said,  'Well,  he 
died  toward  the  end  of  the  next  year.'  'Huh,' 
said  the  great  financier,  'If  he'd  gone  on  working 
he'd  be  alive  still!' 

"This  habit  of  keeping  on  working  after 
amassing  a  fortune  is  a  deep-rooted  American 
doctrine,"  Mr.  Forbes  went  on,  "and  we  have 
more  conspicuously  successful  men  of  affairs 
than  any  other  nation  as  a  result.  In  most 
other  countries  the  habit  has  been  to  quit  work 
at  a  comparatively  early  age — but  not  here! 

"And  that  is  one  reason  why  the  United  States 
is  now  the  leading  industrial  nation  on  earth. 

16 


A  Laboring  Nation 

Our  big  men  dont  get  off  the  bridge  of  the  ship  as 
soon  as  they  have  learned  how  to  sail  it  with 
extraordinary  success.  They  go  on  with  their 
work — and  the  country  benefits. 

'Tf  China  could  import  a  dozen  American 
'giants'  who  are  over  sixty-five  years  of  age,  it 
would  be  worth  untold  millions  to  the  Chinese 
republic ! 

''I  once  took  a  vote  of  between  five  and  six 
thousand  business  men  as  to  who  were  the  fifty 
foremost  men  of  affairs  in  this  country.  The 
average  age  of  the  fifty  men  was  sixty-one  years ! 
And  of  the  fifty  almost  every  one  was  daily  on 
the  job.  With  few  exceptions  our  great  'cap- 
tains of  industry/  no  matter  whether  they  are  , 
sixty,  or  sixty -five,  or  even  seventy  years  of  age, 
work  very  much  harder  than  the  average 
'workman.' 

"Judge  Gary  is  noted  for  the  amount  of  work  Some 
he  gets  through,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  Mtllion- 
he  is  over  seventy.    Theodore  N.  Vail,  the  man  ExrMPLEs 
who  really  gave  America  the  telephone  system, 
worked  like  a  Trojan  up  to  the  time  of  his  death, 
at  the  age  of  seventy-five.    George  F.  Baker, 
who,  with  J.  P.  Morgan  and  James  Stillman 
constituted  the  'Big  Three'  in  the  financial  world, 
is  still  very  actively  on  the  job,  although  he  is 
over   eighty   years   old.    Robert   Dollar,  the 
Pacific  lumber  and  steamship  king,  is  so  con- 
stantly on  the  move,  looking  after  his  vast 
world-wide  interests,  that  there's  not  a  year 

17 


A  Laboring  Nation 

that  he  doesn't  cover  enough  ground  to  travel 
more  than  around  the  world;  he  is  seventy- 
eight.  John  H.  Patterson,  the  famous  National 
Cash  Register  man,  remains  dynamically  active, 
although  he  is  past  seventy-five.  John  D. 
Rockefeller  says  he  doesn't  work  any  longer, 
but  as  a  matter  of  fact  he  does;  hardly  a 
day  passes  but  what  he  closets  himself  with  his 
associates  and  attends  to  important  matters, 
though  nowadays  most  of  these  relate  to  dis- 
tributing, rather  than  to  making,  money;  he  is 
eighty-three  years  old.  His  son,  John  D.  Rock- 
efeller, Jr.,  born  to  an  enormous  fortune,  is  a 
very  busy  man.  Both  Hill  and  Harriman,  our 
greatest  railroad  men,  were  in  harness  practically 
up  to  the  day  of  their  death. 
Producers,  ''What  is  morc  —  and  very  important  —  " 
NOT        '    added  Mr.  Forbes,  emphatically,  ''These  and 

Parasites       ^^^^^  ^^^^    ^^^^  ^^^y  exceptional 

cases,  actuated  by  any  consuming  desire  to  pile 
up  more  milhons.  They  feel  that  they  have  a 
work  to  do  in  the  world,  a  service  to  render  to 
keep  the  scheme  of  things  going.  They  want 
to  be  producers,  not  parasites — leaders,  not 
loafers.  They  want  to  construct,  and  to  develop 
the  resources  of  the  country.  And  this  is  not 
merely  in  order  to  add  to  their  bank  accounts — 
bank  accounts  mean  little  to  them  when  they 
reach  that  stage— but  for  the  sake  of  accom- 
plishing big  things,  of  building  up  the  nation's 
resources,  helping  to  raise  its  place  among  the 

18 


A  Laboring  Nation 

industrial  nations;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  to 
provide  employment  for  large  and  still  larger 
numbers  of  citizens,  at  wages  that  will  permit 
their  employes  to  live  decently,  and  bring  up 
and  educate  their  children. 
"This  is  their  work. 

''And  one  can't  emphasize  too  strongly  the  Manage- 
fact  that  the  management  and  development  of  ^^J^Jg.^^^ 
industry  takes  work  and  careful  management  as 
well  as  the  investment  of  money.  Idle  capital, 
like  idle  hands,  can  produce  nothing.  If  these 
men  were  to  try,  for  instance,  to  lock  up  their 
money  in  vaults,  not  only  would  it  not  produce 
a  cent  of  income  for  them,  but  their  way  of 
'saving'  it  would  be  distinctly  harmful  to  the 
country,  because  the  money  would  be  withdrawn 
from  use,  and  capital  would  be  wasted  that  could 
be  usefully  employed  to  develop  some  line  of 
business  or  industry,  and  provide  employment. 
But  that  isn't  all!  It  is  not  enough  for  these 
rich  men  to  put  their  money  to  work!  Idle 
capital  is  no  more  harmful  than  capital  mis- 
applied. And  it  takes  brains  to  use  capital 
wisely  and  productively.  The  'capitalist'  has 
got  to  keep  using  his  brains.  That  is  work! 
There  is  a  saying,  you  know,  that  'it  takes 
more  brains  to  keep  money  than  to  make  it.' 
Certainly  it  takes  brains  to  keep  money 
properly  busy! 

"That  is  one  thing.  Another  thing,"  Mr. 
Forbes  went  on,  "is  that  nearly  all  these  men 


19 


A  Laboring  Nation 

love  to  work.  If  they  hadn't  loved  to  work,  they 
wouldn't  have  been  successful  in  the  first  place. 
You  can't  find  two  lazy  self-made  millionaires 
in  America.  They  wouldn't  have  got  rich  if 
they  were  lazy,  if  they  didn't  enjoy  work  for 
its  own  sake.  The  same  principle  that  enables 
a  workman  to  rise  to  be  foreman  or  superin- 
tendent applies  to  men  who  have  risen  up  to 
millionairedom.  Every  intelligent  workman 
knows  that  if  he  aspires  to  be  a  foreman,  and  so 
on,  he  must  apply  himself  with  all  the  industry 
and  diligence  he  can  command.  He  must  show 
that  he  knows  more  about  his  job  and  can  do  it 
better  than  the  average  workman,  or  else  be 
content  to  remain  an  average  workman.  Lazi- 
ness is  absolutely  the  greatest  barrier  of  all  to 
attaining  advancement  in  any  line  of  work— 
the  man  who  has  'made  good'  isn't  lazy;  he  is 
an  active  person  who  enjoys  activity  and  is 
interested  in  what  he  is  doing.  No  matter 
how  rich  he  gets,  he  doesn't  want  to  loaf! 
Nothing  "Moreover,  the  men  who  have  achieved  suc- 
Can  Run      ^.^gg  building  up  of  any  enterprise  know 

that  if  you  leave  a  thing  to  run  itself  there  is 
only  one  way  it  will  run — downhill.  They 
know  the  necessity  of  being  on  the  job  every  day 
and  all  day.  Brains  are  as  essential  as  capital. 
Idle  brains  are  just  as  unproductive  and  useless 
as  idle  capital.  The  president  of  a  company 
knows  that  he  cannot  fill  his  job  satisfactorily 
unless  he  works  hard  and  keeps  his  mind  on 

20 


A  Laboring  Nation 

his  business,  any  more  than  a  machinist  can. 

''So  we  come  back  to  where  we  started!  It 
isn't  enough  for  any  man  to  make  one  'ten 
strike/  achieve  one  briUiant  idea,  and  then  hve 
on  his  laurels.  It  is  necessary  to  keep  jogging 
along,  whatever  it  is  one  does.  One  of  the  worst 
foes  to  attaining  success  in  any  line  of  endeavor 
is  impatience.  We  all  feel  that  things  don't 
come  our  way  quickly  enough.  We  see  other 
men's  results  and  think  they  are  'lucky.'  We 
don't  know  anything  about  the  planning,  schem- 
ing, sweating,  plodding,  perseverance,  that  led 
up  to  the  result  we  see.  We  can  see  the  trunk 
and  the  branches  of  the  oak  tree,  but  we  don't 
see  all  the  work  going  on,  under  the  ground,  by 
the  myriads  of  roots.  Most  of  us  would  like  to 
sport  fine  trunks  and  branches  and  leaves,  but 
we  don't  realize  that  it's  only  the  labor  of  the 
roots  that  makes  the  oak  possible!" 

In  his  book,  "Men  Who  are  Making  Amer- 
ica," Mr.  Forbes  says:  "The  more  I  dig  into  the 
lives  of  successful  men  the  more  convinced  I 
become  that  all  have  had  to  travel  the  same  sort 
of  hilly  road,  sweating  brow  and  brain,  meeting 
and  overcoming  obstacles,  but  never  losing  sight 
of  their  lodestar,  no  matter  how  great  the  prov- 
ocation. The  scale  that  weighs  success  and 
mediocrity,  I  verily  believe,  oftentimes  is  tipped 
by  an  extra  ounce  or  two  of  energy,  an  additional 
hour  or  two  of  labor,  an  added  yard  or  two  of 
foresight." 


21 


A  Laboring  Nation 

But  do  they  stop  when  they  are  ''successful"? 
Indeed  they  don't! 

One  Man's  Story 
An  "Empire  We  might  run  ou  for  hours  with  stories  of 
|u^ilder's"  j^^j^  who,  in  their  work,  and  their  work's  con- 
tinuance, have  won  satisfaction  for  themselves 
and  benefit  for  the  community — whose  toil  was 
of  vast  interest  to  themselves  and  vital  impor- 
tance to  the  country,  long  after  the  spur  of  finan- 
cial need  had  ceased  to  prick.  We  are  a  nation 
of  laborers ^ — laborers  with  hand  and  brain. 
Because  we  are  a  nation  of  laborers  we  have 
risen  to  a  power  and  greatness  and  promise 
that  are  immeasurably  more  than  mere  ''wealth." 
We  could  tell  interesting  stories  of  the  work  of 
our  great  laborers  all  day  long.  We  choose 
one  story,  as  an  historian  tells  it,  because  it 
illustrates  very  strikingly  and  very  simply  the 
great  points  about  work.  From  a  short  biog- 
raphy in  "iVmericans  by  Adoption,"  by  Joseph 
Husband  (The  Atlantic  Monthly  Press),  are 
taken  these  items  from  the  life  of  the  great  rail- 
road builder,  James  J.  Hill: 

"When  he  was  fourteen  his  father  died,  and, 
reahzing  the  responsibilities  which  were  now 
resting  upon  his  shoulders,  the  boy  gave  up  his 
hope  of  a  professional  career,  and  for  four  years 
supported  his  mother  and  her  household  with 
such  small  wages  as  he  earned  as  clerk  in  the 
village  store. 

22 


A  Laboring  Nation 

"For  several  years,  in  the  imaginative  brain 
of  the  boy,  had  grown  the  hope  of  some  day 
crossing  the  western  plains  and  sailing  across  the 
Pacific.  ...  He  had  but  little  money; 
but  he  had  faith  in  himself  and  in  his  future. 
Each  year  the  longing  grew,  until,  when  he  was 
eighteen,  he  could  stand  it  no  more,  and  his  new 
life  began. 

''Without  money,  friends,  or  influence,  he 
crossed  the  boundary  into  the  United  States, 
and  after  visiting  several  of  the  large  eastern 
cities  made  his  way  to  St.  Paul,  then  a  small 
town  situated  at  the  head  of  navigable  water  on 
the  Mississippi  River.  North  and  west  the 
unbroken  prairie  and  the  forests  were  peopled 
only  by  the  Indians;  buffalo  roamed  the  prai- 
ries. Only  along  the  navigable  rivers  were  the 
cultivated  farm  lands  of  the  settlers. 

"The  young  man  had  no  money.  .  .  .  Money 
He  was  eighteen  years  old,  but  he  was  willing  S^^Lt 
to  turn  his  hand  to  any  honest  work,  and  ms 
vivid  imagination  inspired  him  to  work  hard  so 
that  his  future  hope  might  be  realized.  .  .  . 
The  position  of  shipping  clerk  in  the  ofl&ce  of  the 
agent  of  a  steamboat  company  was  open,  and 
he  grasped  it.  The  work  was  varied;  he  received 
incoming  and  outgoing  freight,  ran  the  ware- 
house, inspected  its  contents,  kept  an  open  eye 
for  new  business,  and  when  labor  was  scarce 
helped  the  men  load  and  unload  the  steamboats. 


23 


A  Laboring  Nation 


On  this  early  experience  was  to  be  built  the  great 
triumph  of  coming  years. 

''Not  content  with  performing  well  his  daily 
work,  young  Hill  spent  his  evenings  largely  in 
studying  the  more  technical  and  theoretical 
aspects  of  the  transportation  business,  and  the 
possibilities,  dependent  upon  adequate  trans- 
portation, of  the  development  of  the  great  unex- 
plored Northwest.  Moreover,  he  saved  his 
money,  realizing  that  a  time  might  come  when 
his  savings,  however  small,  might  prove  vital 
to  the  grasping  of  an  opportunity. 

''In  a  few  years,  his  steady  attention  to  his 
work  and  the  long  hours  of  study  had  put  him 
in  a  position  from  which  he  could  now  step 
fearlessly  forward.  He  was  a  man  of  affairs. 
.  .  .  He  realized  that  the  time  had  come  to 
strike  out  for  himself." 
Work,  As  a  young  business  man  now,  Hill  was  of 

Dr^NG^'  course  well-to-do  compared  with  those  days, 
only  a  short  time  ago,  when  he  had  supported 
his  mother  on  a  fourteen-year-old's  wage.  But 
the  important  thing  about  his  success,  so  far, 
was  not  that  it  had  brought  him  enough  money 
to  "rest  on,"  but  that  it  was  opening  up  new 
activities.  He  began  to  identify  himself  with 
the  traffic  carried  on  between  St.  Paul  and  the 
North;  he  developed  and  enlarged  his  ware- 
house business;  he  worked  with  freight;  above  all, 
he  studied  the  thing  that  had  always  thrilled 
and  held  him^ — transportation  itself,  the  devel- 

24 


A  Laboring  Nation 

opment  of  the  railroads.  He  dreamed  of  open- 
ing up  the  Northwest;  he  beUeved  that  trans- 
portation would  do  it. 

"His  romantic  vision  led  him  on  in  his  thoughts 
far  beyond  the  boundaries  which  surrounded  the 
mental  vision  of  his  fellow  citizens,  and  his  years 
of  study  and  varied  business  experience  enabled 
him,  step  by  step,  to  turn  his  dreams  into  real- 
ities. .  .  .  Many  are  the  stories  that  are 
told  of  Mr.  Hill  in  those  early  days.  In  the  heat 
of  summer  and  in  the  bhzzards  of  the  northern 
winters,  he  personally  inspected  and  carried 
forward  the  work  which  he  had  designed.  He 
endured  every  kind  of  hardship.  On  his  steam- 
boats in  the  open  months,  and  with  sled  and  dog 
train  in  winter,  he  passed  back  and  forth  over 
the  route,  examining  every  local  condition, 
studying  the  soil,  the  climate,  and  the  mineral 
deposits  along  the  way."  And  for  seventeen 
years  of  work  and  dreams  and  savings  he 
watched  the  possibilities  for  railroad  develop- 
ment. When  the  opportunity  came  to  purchase 
a  railroad,  it  was  a  road  that  had  gone  to  pieces 
and  was  heavily  in  debt,  and  it  took  every  cent 
that  Hill  could  scrape  together  to  make  this 
wreck  of  a  road  his  own. 

That  road  —  "two  streaks  of  rust  reaching 
out  into  the  desert" — was  the  beginning  of 
James  J.  Hill's  greatness;  as  such,  it  was  the 
signal  for  even  harder  work.  By  work  and  plans 
and  daring,  he  built  up  that  railroad,  and 

25 


A  Laboring  Nation 

extended  it  to  open  up  new  lands — the  great 
wheatlands  of  the  Northwest.  In  1893  he 
began  actively  to  carry  out  the  biggest  part  of 
his  dreams — the  extension  of  his  road  to  the 
Pacific  coast.  ''It  is  hard  to  realize  the  tre- 
mendous difficulties  which  faced  him.  But  he 
was  undismayed;  every  obstacle  was  overcome, 
the  road  was  built,  and  the  empire  again 
extended  its  boundary,  this  time  to  the  blue 
waters  of  the  Pacific."  And  still  through  the 
passing  years  he  dreamed  his  dreams  of  bigger 
railroads  still,  and  worked  to  carry  them  out 
to  fruition.  'Tifty  years  before,  the  penniless 
country  boy  had  left  the  village  of  his  birth  to 
seek  his  fortune;  and  now,  after  this  life  of 
usefulness,  he  found  himself  able  to  pay  in 
cash  over  $200,000,000  for  the  Northern  Pacific 
Railway  system." 

But  did  the  millionaire  Hill  stop  working.^ 
By  no  means!    He  had  things  to  do! 

He  always  believed  firmly  in  the  basic  impor- 
tance of  agriculture — the  extension  of  the  rail- 
roads meant  the  opening  up  of  new  agricultural 
lands;  he  worked  to  help  the  farmers  and  settlers, 
giving  them  cattle  which  he  had  bred  on  his 
own  farms.  He  was  interested  in  the  country's 
mineral  deposits — ^he  investigated  the  coal 
fields  of  the  Northwest,  followed  up  the  rumors 
of  the  presence  of  iron  ore,  went  into  the  mining 
business.  He  experimented  with  a  steamship 
line  to  the  Orient,  and  made  special  studies  of 


26 


A  Laboring  Nation 

China's  food  problem  and  the  possible  market 
in  China  for  American  flour.  His  activities 
continued  throughout  his  life. 

All  this  was  not  a  matter  of  money;  it  was  a  Money 
matter  of  work.    Even  if  he  had  got  the  money  Without 
without  working  for  it,  the  money  itself  would  Work 
have  been  useless  without  the  man's  constant 
toil.    One  writer  has  summed  up  in  a  sentence 
what  was  perhaps  the  secret  of  James  J.  Hill's 
success:    ''AH  his  life  it  was  his  custom  to  know 
all  the  facts  about  anything  in  which  he  was 
interested,  a  good  deal  earlier,  and  a  little 
better,  than  anybody  else."    That  meant  work! 
It  meant  work  that  didn't  stop  when  James  J. 
Hill  had  made  a  fortune !  * 

We  have  not  related  this  story  of  James  J. 
Hill  with  any  idea  of  telling  anyone  else  that 
he  can  go  and  do  likewise.  Hill  was  absolutely 
an  individual,  with  his  individual  ambitions  and 
his  individual  genius.  Every  one  of  us  is  an 
individual.  Even  if  it  were  possible  for  every 
one  of  us  to  become  rich  and  powerful,  there 
would  never  be  anyone  else  just  like  James  J. 
Hill.  And  there  are  only  a  few  leaders,  only  a 
few  giants,  among  men.  But  if  this  story  of 
one  giant's  life  does  not  prove  that  everybody 
else  can  be  like  him,  it  does  prove  that  in  one 
essential  particular  he  was  pretty  much  like 

*" Americans  by  Adoption,"  the  book  from  which  the  quotations  and  facts  cited 
above  have  been  taken,  is  a  fascinating  little  collection  of  short  life-stories  —  the  stories 
of  men  who  have  come  from  other  countries  to  work  out  their  dreams  and  find  success, 
in  widely  differing  fields,  in  this  nation  of  workers.  In  acknowledging  our  debt  to  the 
book  for  the  paragraphs  above,  we  recommend  the  volume  itself  to  our  readers. 

27 


A  Laboring  Nation 

everybody  else!  He  was  like  everybody  else 
because  he  ivorked. 

"The  Day's  Work" 
"The  Day's      Hill's  life  is  especially  striking  because  his 
Wall  work  Opened  up  a  new  country  and  accomplished 

Street  SO  much  for  the  United  States  and  thousands 
upon  thousands  of  its  citizens.  Both  his  own 
love  for  his  work,  and  the  importance  of  the 
work  itself,  stand  out.  He  had  his  job,  and  he 
never  shirked  it.  But  we  could  run  over  the 
lives  of  almost  every  ''capitaUst,"  ''captain  of 
industry,"  ''financier"  in  the  country,  and  find 
just  the  thing  that  is  so  striking  in  the  great 
railroad  man's  career:  practically  all  of  them  are 
working.  Samuel  Crowther  points  out  in  one 
of  his  books  that  there  are  almost  no  "owners  of 
capital"  who  are  not  busy  in  "management"  of 
one  kind  or  another.  Says  Guy  Emerson: 
"American  business  men  have  been  deeply 
devoted  to  their  own  work.  They  have  learned 
the  value  of  concentration.  They  have  done  a 
century's  work  in  the  past  generation. 
Wall  Street  today  is  the  great  Mecca  of  trained 
men  from  all  over  America.  .  .  .  And 
the  predominant  motive  today  is  not  money, 
but  rather  the  absorbing  fascination  of  the  day's 
work.  .  .  .  These  banks  supply  the  life- 
blood  for  the  transaction  of  essential  business, 
and  with  various  shifts  of  workers  are  practically 
never  closed  day  or  night,  year  after  year.    .    .  . 


28 


A  Laboring  Nation 

The  groups  of  men  whose  business  it  is  to  supply 
credit  to  productive  industries  are  just  as  essen- 
tial to  the  industry  of  any  nation  or  community 
as  is  the  coal  to  a  locomotive."* 

Before  we  leave  this  detail  of  the  universality 
of  the  day's  work,  there  is  an  interesting  little 
side-light  to  be  thrown  on  it  by  an  interview  with 
a  policeman!  In  front  of  Trinity  Church  in 
New  York  City,  where  Wall  Street  runs  down 
from  Broadway,  the  same  policeman  has  been 
on  duty  every  morning  for  years.  One  day  last 
fall  'The  New  York  Evening  Post"  sent  a 
reporter  to  have  a  little  talk  with  him;  and  here 
is  part  of  the  story  of  that  interview: 

"Does  he  look  at  the  clock  to  see  the  time,  or 
does  he  wait  to  hear  the  bells  toll  out  their 
message  of  the  hour.^  He  does  not;  he  knows 
what  time  it  is  by  the  appearance  of  the  million- 
aires in  their  automobiles. 

''Millionaires,  he  says,  are  'far  more  demo- 
cratic' than  are  the  junior  clerks  and  stock  run- 
ners who  pass  him  every  hour  in  the  day. 

"  'So  you  heard  I  could  tell  the  time  by  the 
people  who  pass.^^'  he  inquired  in  answer  to  a 
question.  'Well,  you  are  right;  I  can.  There's 
nothing  mysterious  about  that,  and  I'll  tell  you 
why. 

"  'Millionaires,  men  of  finance,  and  prominent  "Regular- 
men  in  public  life,  are  set  in  their  ways.    They  ^o^^mE" 
have  regularity  and  routine  in  their  lives.  Each 

*"The  New  Frontier"  (Henry  Holt).    (Italics  ours.) 


29 


A  Laboring  Nation 

day  is  plotted  out  before  it  actually  comes. 
Every  hour,  every  minute,  is  accounted  for. 
So  what  more  natural  than  that  they  should 
select  a  certain  time  for  coming  down  and  getting 
to  work  in  the  morning  ? 

"  'Of  'em  all,  I  think  George  Baker,  Sr.,  of 
the  First  National  Bank,  gets  down  before  the 
others.  He  always  arrives,  rain  or  shine,  be- 
tween 9 :15  and  9 :30.  This  despite  the  fact  that 
he  is  eighty-two  years  old. 

"  'Here!  There  you  are!  There  goes  John 
D.  Rockefeller,  Jr.,  and  his  wife.  He  always 
drives  his  own  car  himself.  He  gets  down  at 
10:30  every  morning.  Leaves  his  office  about 
five  o'clock  every  evening. 

"  'J.  P.  Morgan  doesn't  come  to  work  as  early 
now  as  he  formerly  did.  He  generally  arrives 
at  eleven  o'clock,  his  car  stopping  in  front  of 
Trinity  Church.  He  gets  out  there  and  walks 
down  himself.  Seems  to  like  to  walk  down  this 
old  street,  somehow.  His  son,  Junius,  gets  here 
earlier 5  tliou^li. 

"  'Elbert  H.  Gary  generally  arrives  down  here 
at  ten  o'clock.  Since  he's  come  back  from  Europe 
he's  been  down  here  even  earlier  of  mornings. 

"  'That's  the  way  it  goes.  They  keep  on 
coming  day  after  day,  until  one  day  they  don't 
come  any  more,  like  Mr.  Schiff  and  Mr.  Carnegie, 
and  a  host  of  others.  It's  life,  that's  all,  and 
death  follows  it,  and  there  are  no  two  ways 
about  it.'  " 


30 


A  Laboring  Nation 


Different  Needs 
As  we  look  at  the  activities  of  these  typical 
''capitalists"  and  ''big  business  men,"  and  see 
that  they  are  not  "gentlemen  of  leisure/'  but 
as  busy  as  any  of  us,  we  can't  help  noticing 
another  thing: 

The  world  needs  a  lot  of  different  kinds  of 
work! 

There  is  a  certain  phrase  that  is  heard  often  A**  Catch- 
on  the  lips  of  "radical"  talkers  of  a  certain  type, 
and  met  often  in  the  reading  matter  that  these 
"radicals"  circulate.  It  is  —  "Labor  produces 
all."  It  means  that  all  industry,  all  wealth,  all 
progress,  is  brought  about  by  the  manual  toil 
of  the  laborers  in  mine  and  mill  and  factory, 
that  "Labor"  and  "Labor"  only,  is  the  producer 
of  the  world's  goods.  And  from  this  first  state- 
ment the  man  who  makes  it  goes  on  and  argues 
that  since  laboring  men  alone  produce,  laboring 
men  alone  should  possess:  "Labor  produces  all," 
he  says,  "therefore  Labor  should  get  all.  The 
capitalists  and  financiers  and  all  the  rest  of  'em — 
all  except  laborers — are  simply  parasites  and 
thieves.  They  are  all  living  on  what  other  men 
earn." 

That  statement,  that  "Labor  produces  all,"  A  Half- 
Is  a  misinterpretation  and  distortion  of  a  basic 
fact.    It  is  a  sort  of  half-truth — and  a  half- 
truth  is  the  most  dangerous  kind  of  lie :  we  think 
it  must  all  be  true  because  we  know  that  some 


31 


A  Laboring  Nation 

of  it  is,  and  we  can't  dispose  of  it  by  denying 
the  whole  thing;  yet  ''the  whole  thing"  is  not 
true!  There  is  something  that  is  true  to  start 
with — and  then  that  true  something  is  twisted 
into  something  else,  that  is  not  true  at  all! 

It  is  true  that  nothing  can  be  produced 
without  labor — the  labor  of  men's  hands.  It 
is  true  that  unless  men  toiled  in  mines  to  get 
coal  and  iron  we  should  have  no  coal  and  iron; 
that  unless  men  toiled  in  mills  to  make  steel  we 
should  have  no  steel;  that  unless  men  toiled  in 
factories  we  should  have  no  automobiles,  or 
threshing  machines,  or  clothing,  or  electric 
lamps,  or  furniture,  or  anything.  It  is  true 
that  ' 'Labor "  is  absolutely  essential  in  the  pro- 
duction of  the  wealth  of  the  world,  in  the  crea- 
tion of  the  world's  goods. 

It  is  true  that  Labor  is  a  necessary  producer. 
It  is  not  true  that  Labor  is  the  only  producer. 
It  is  true  that  Labor  produces,  and  it  is  also 
true  that  Capital  produces,  that  Management 
produces,  that  Science  produces,  that  all  skill 
and  expertness  and  brain- work  produces.  What 
we  said  a  moment  ago  of  the  necessity  for  Labor 
in  mines  and  mills  and  factories  is  just  as  true  of 
the  necessity  for  Capital,  for  Management,  for 
Science,  for  headwork  of  all  sorts.  Change  the 
words  about,  and  the  sentences  still  stand. 

In  Russia  the  Bolsheviki  started  out  by  saying 
that  "Labor  produced  all,"  and  that  everyone 
should  be  paid  alike,  and  there  should  be  no 

32 


A  Laboring  Nation 

''experts"  or  ''capitalists" — and  they  found  that 
under  such  a  dream  production  simply  stopped. 
We  all  know  how  they  have  offered  concessions 
to  technical  experts,  how  they  have  fairly  begged 
foreign  capitalists  to  invest  money  in  their 
industries,  how  they  have  formally  admitted 
the  utter  failure  of  "equal  pay."  In  Italy  the 
workers  who  were  trying  to  run  their  own  fac- 
tories declared  at  the  outset  that  they  must  have 
technical  experts.  Wherever  any  attempt  is 
made  to  try  out  the  principle  that  "Labor 
produces  all,"  it  is  seen  to  be  utterly  impossible. 

What  really  "produces  all"  is  work — every-  Division 
body's  work.  Alfred  E.  Zimmern,  a  liberal  ^^^''^^^ 
economist,  says,  "Under  any  system  of  manage- 
ment there  must  be  division  of  labor;  there  must 
be  those  who  know  all  about  one  subject  and 
are  best  fitted  to  deal  with  it."  That  is  another 
way  of  saying  that  everybody's  work  is  needed. 

For  example,  let  us  look  at  the  making  of 
lamps.  Not  a  lamp  could  be  made  if  the 
workers  weren't  sitting  at  their  tables,  before 
their  gas  flames,  doing  their  work.  But — aside 
from  the  investment  of  capital  in  machinery  and 
buildings  and  wages  and  other  necessities  (we 
shall  have  more  to  say  about  that  another  time) 
— the  making  of  lamps  depends  on  the  work  of 
many  other  people  besides  those  who  put  the 
glass  tubes  into  the  bulbs,  or  give  the  lamp  its 
magic  bit  of  tungsten  filament. 

Not  a  lamp  could  be  made — and  not  a  worker 


33 


A  Laboring  Nation 

employed  —  without  the  busy  day's  toil  of 
factory  managers,  of  department  directors,  of 
sales  superintendents  and  salesmen  themselves, 
of  executives  in  offices,  of  scientists  in  labora- 
tories. To  make  lamps,  there  must  be  scientific 
knowledge  of  electricity  and  how  to  use  it,  with 
constant  research  to  keep  this  knowledge  at  the 
head  of  man's  knowledge  in  this  field;  there  must 
be  expert  investigation  and  improvement  of 
lamp-making  equipment;  there  must  be  a  great 
''sales  department"  to  attend  to  the  distribution 
and  sale  of  the  lamps,  else  there  w^ould  be  no 
market  for  them,  and  they  would  cease  to  be 
made  because  they  would  cease  to  be  delivered 
and  sold;  there  must  be  accounting  departments 
to  look  after  all  the  expenses  of  manufacture, 
balancing  the  ''income"  and  the  "outgo,"  keeping 
tabs  on  all  the  financial  end  of  the  business  so 
that  it  can  continue  to  be  a  "paying  concern"  for 
employes  and  investors;  there  must  be  manag- 
ers— floor  managers,  department  managers,  fac- 
tory managers,  company  managers — each  to  take 
the*^  responsibility  and  attend  to  the  direction  of 
his  own  field,  so  that  the  thousands  of  workers 
will  be  working  systematically  to  fill  a  need, 
and  not  just  hit-or-miss  at  anything  that  comes 
into  someone's  mind.  There  must  be  execu- 
tives, directors,  experts. 

And  just  as  these  executives  and  directors 
could  not  accomplish  anything  without  the 
"manual  workers"  in  the  factories,  so  the  factory 


34 


A  Laboring  Nation 

workers  could  not  accomplish  anything  without 
the  ''executives"  and  the  rest.  They  could  do 
their  own  work  alone,  but  ''their  own  work" 
could  not  stand  —  could  not  continue  to  exist — 
by  itself. 

Sometimes,  when  it  is  pointed  out  that  execu-  *'Super- 
tives  and  directors,  as  well  as  manual  workers, 
are  needed  in  manufacture,  somebody  or  other 
raises  an  indignant  protest  because  he  assumes 
that  when  you  say  that  a  factory  can't  get  along 
without  executives  you  mean  that  the  workers 
can't  get  along  without  supervision:  he  thinks 
that  "executives"  are  just  people  who  "stand 
over  the  workers"  and  tell  them  what  to  do! 
But  anyone  who  really  knows  any  factory,  any 
industrial  business,  and  goes  to  the  trouble  of 
taking  a  good  hard  look  at  it,  can  see  at  once 
how  mistaken  such  an  idea  is.  The  indigna- 
tion is  all  wrong  because  the  assumption  is  all 
wrong  in  the  first  place.  Of  course  the  workers 
could  get  along  without  "supervision."  They 
probably  would  not  get  so  much  done  without 
direction  and  assistance — that  depends  largely 
on  the  nature  of  the  work.  But  no  intelligent 
worker  who  has  mastered  his  job  needs  to  have 
someone  "standing  over  him"  all  the  time,  tell- 
ing him  how  to  do  it,  and  no  conscientious  worker 
has  to  be  "checked  up"  to  see  that  he  doesn't 
shirk!  However,  the  work  itself  needs  super- 
vision— the  amount  to  be  done,  the  payment  of 
wages,  the  employment  of  new  "help,"  the  main- 


35 


A  Laboring  Nation 


tenance  of  good  working  conditions,  the  daily 
recording  of  achievements,  expenses,  details  of 
one  kind  or  another  that  must  be  ''kept  track 
of."  And  the  work  needs  direction,  too;  as 
we  said,  there  must  be  knowledge  of  what  is 
required,  fitting  of  ''supply"  to  "demand"  in 
many  ways.  It  isn't  supervision  of  the  workers 
— it's  supervision  of  the  work! 
Direction  When  the  war  broke  out  in  Europe,  women  all 
AND  over  the  United  States  began  to  knit,  and  sew, 

System  ^^^^  bandages,  to  do  what  they  could  to 

help  in  relief  work.  As  time  went  on  and  the 
devastation  and  tragedy  of  the  war  grew  worse 
and  worse,  as  we  ourselves  entered  the  conflict 
and  our  own  boys  went  overseas  to  fight,  more 
and  more  of  the  patriotic  and  devoted  women  of 
America  gave  their  time  and  their  strength  to 
this  effort.  And  at  first  everyone  did  just  what 
she  wanted  to,  or  thought  of  first,  or  had  heard 
someone  say  was  needed.  They  were  all  work- 
ing, working  hard,  working  unselfishly,  but  work- 
ing without  direction  or  "system."  And  as  a 
result  Red  Cross  warehouses  began  to  be  filled 
to  overflowing  with  things  that  weren't  needed 
at  ah — bandages  that  were  too  short,  knitted 
articles  of  the  wrong  size  or  the  wrong  kind, 
various  sorts  of  things  that  were  ah  right  in 
themselves,  but  were  no  longer  in  demand 
because  a  sufficiently  large  supply  had  already 
been  sent  in.  For  example,  someone  came  back 
from  France  one  time  and  said  that  there  was  a 

36 


A  Laboring  Nation 

great  need  for  knitted  wash-cloths,  and  all  over 
the  country  women  began  to  knit  wash-cloths  to 
meet  that  need;  thousands  upon  thousands  of 
wash-cloths  were  sent  to  Washington,  whole 
rooms  were  filled  with  boxes  of  wash-cloths; 
there  had  been  a  need  in  the  first  place,  but  the 
need  was  quickly  filled  ^ — and  still  the  wash- 
cloths kept  coming  by  the  thousand,  and  women 
worked  away  to  make  wash-cloths,  when,  if 
they  had  only  known  it,  they  were  wasting 
time  and  strength  and  material  that  were  needed 
for  other  things.  So  the  Red  Cross  started  in 
and  ''systematized"  everything;  expert  investi- 
gators were  sent  overseas  to  find  out  just  what 
was  needed,  what  kind,  what  size,  what  material, 
how  much  of  each.  Directions  were  prepared 
and  sent  out  to  all  the  divisions,  to  all  the  chap- 
ters. The  supply  was  regulated  to  meet  the 
actual  demand.  New  workers — investigators, 
directors,  clerks — were  busy.  Even  in  so 
simple  a  matter  as  knitting,  the  Red  Cross  had 
found  that  direction  and  system  were  necessary 
things. 

And  so  it  is  in  every  business,  every  manu- 
facture, every  making  of  anything.  Whatever 
it  is  that  is  being  done,  it  needs  a  dozen  different 
kinds  of  work!  A  scholarly  weekly  magazine 
remarked  recently  that  one  of  the  scientists  at 
the  Nela  Research  Laboratory  was  probably  the 
country's  ''greatest  expert  on  color  and  arti- 
ficial lighting,"  and  added  a  tribute  to  his 

37 


A  Laboring  Nation 

"profound  knowledge  of  the  history  of  the  devel- 
opment of  lighting  from  the  earliest  times." 
A  writer  on  modern  social  and  economic  prob- 
lems stated  a  short  time  ago  that  certainly  a 
hundred  former  professors  of  economics  were 
now  connected  with  American  business  life,  and 
that  the  co-operation  between  business  and  the 
colleges  was  drawing  closer  all  the  time.  And 
these  are  not  remarkable  things,  they  are  mat- 
ters of  course.  Like  Judge  Gary's  being  on  the 
job  of  a  morning,  the  noticeable  point  about  them 
is  not  that  they  are  surprising,  but  rather  that 
they  occasion  no  surprise.  Of  course  a  company 
that  manufactures  electric  lamps  must  enlist  the 
aid  of  science,  and  employ  scientists !  Of  course 
great  manufacturing  firms  with  great  economic 
problems  to  deal  with  must  employ  trained  econ- 
omists and  cooperate  with  the  colleges  where 
Evert  One  experts  are  trained!  Knock  out  any  one  of  the 
IS  Neces-  many  essential  kinds  of  work,  and  all  the  work 
goes  to  pieces.  You  can  not  build  a  house  with- 
out steel;  you  cannot  build  a  house  without  wood; 
you  cannot  build  a  house  without  plaster. 
Every  one  is  necessary — every  one  is  useless  alone. 

Yes,  we  are  all  of  us  working.  We  all  of  us 
have  work  to  do.  And  in  the  best  sort  of  indus- 
try, the  best  factory,  the  workers  —  superinten- 
dents and  laborers,  employers  and  employed  — 
are  all  working  together  and  know  it.  There  is 
something  wrong  with  the  factory  in  which 
either  the  workmen  or  the  employers  are  shirk- 

38 


A  Laboring  Nation 

ing.  We  have  gone  a  long  way  toward  ideal 
conditions  when  each  respects  the  other  as  a 
worker,  and  is  proud  of  his  own  part  in  the  work 
of  the  whole.  But  the  employes  don't  always 
see  that  the  man  who  pays  the  wages  is  working 
too!  They  don't  always  see  his  responsibilities, 
his  active  days,  his  planning  and  ''headwork," 
his  zeal  for  good  work  in  his  own  job — which, 
if  he  is  the  right  kind  of  employer,  is  just  as 
great  as  theirs.  His  work  is  different — but  it 
is  work  just  the  same! 

"On  the  Job" 

A  salaried  worker  was  talking  one  day  with  A  Cap- 
a  millionaire  ''capitalist,"  a  man  who  employs  ^^d'hh 
thousands  of  people,  and  is  at  the  head  of  one  Work 
of  the  big  ''business  concerns"  of  America,  and 
the  conversation  turned  on  the  matter  of  travel- 
ing, of  ''going  abroad."    The  capitalist  went  to 
Europe  quite  often,  it  appeared. 

"It  seems  wonderful  the  first  time,"  he  said, 
"but  you  soon  see  that  it  is  pretty  much  like 
everything  else !  It  is  exciting  to  go  on  the  boat, 
and  the  band  is  playing,  and  there  are  crowds 
seeing  people  off — and  then  the  boat  pulls  out, 
and  you  get  your  chair  on  deck,  and  send  for  a 
stenographer,  and  get  out  your  correspondence 
and  the  other  things  you  have  to  attend  to;  and 
for  the  next  five  days  you  are  working  on  ship- 
board instead  of  working  in  your  ofiice — and 
that's  all  there  is  to  that!" 


39 


A  Laboring  Nation 

It  gave  the  salaried  worker  a  good  deal  of  a 
jolt!  He  knew  that  his  millionaire  friend  went 
abroad  every  once  in  a  while,  that  he  didn't 
have  to  think  about  the  price  of  his  passage,  that 
he  sailed  on  the  fastest  boats,  and  did  every- 
thing in  the  quickest  and  smoothest  way.  He 
had  himself  been  able  to  go  to  Europe  once  or 
twice,  very  carefully  and  economically — and 
he  had  rather  envied  the  rich  man  his  "ease." 
And  now  it  occurred  to  him  for  the  first  time  that 
those  European  trips  of  his  friend's  were  mat- 
ters of  zcorJ:.  "When  he  himself  went  abroad,  it 
was  a  vacation;  he  had  taken  it  for  granted  that 
the  capitalist's  travehngs  were  hoHday  jaunts, 
like  his  own.  Now  he  suddenly  realized  that 
the  man  of  big  responsibilities  wasn't  free  for 
holiday-making.  Unlike  the  salaried  man,  he 
was  unable  to  close  the  office  door  on  his  work  at 
some  stated  time.  Nobody  could  do  his  work 
for  him;  he  was  too  important;  he  couldn't  get 
out  of  touch  with  that  great  business;  he  had  to 
keep  it  on  his  mind,  to  be  busy  over  it,  just 
because  he  was  "a  big  man."  He  wasn't  even 
any  more  free  in  the  choice  of  a  steamship  than 
the  poor  man  was!  The  poor  man  had  to 
travel  on  a  slow  boat  because  it  was  cheap; 
the  rich  man  had  to  travel  on  an  expensive  boat 
because  it  was  fast;  he  might  have  preferred  a 
more  leisurely  crossing,  but  he  hadn't  time ! 

It  was  only  one  little  thing— but  altogether, 
the  man  on  a  small  salary  did  a  good  deal  of 

40 


A  Laboring  Nation 

thinking  on  the  basis  of  that  one  casual  remark! 

Before  we  leave  this  subject  of  being  ''on  the 
job/'  let  us  take  a  look  at  a  famous  factory,  and 
a  famous  man^  that  stand  out  as  types:  The 
Baldwin  Locomotive  Works,  in  Philadelphia, 
is  ninety-five  years  old,  employs  about  17,000 
men,  and  has  never  had  a  strike,  or  even  a 
serious  wage  dispute.  Here  is  what  an  investi- 
gator has  to  say  about  ''Baldwin's"  and  the  man 
at  the  head  of  it: 

"The  heads  and  the  workers  together  devote  Managers 
themselves  pretty  exclusively  to  work.    The  Workers 
wages  seem  pretty  well  able  to  care  for  them-  Together 
selves.    .    .    .    And  here  is  another  fact  to 
bear  in  mind :  these  employers  have  always  been 
more  interested  in  the  work  than  in  the  stock 
market — in  the  product  than  in  its  price. 

"The  reason  is  not  hard  to  find.  The  ani-  Work— 
mating  force  of  man  is  the  creative  instinct;  he  money 
finds  his  happiness  in  creating.  A  real  leader  of 
industry  seldom  finds  any  particular  pleasure 
in  the  money  he  earns.  The  real  fun  is  in  doing 
things.  The  workman  who  is  creating  some- 
thing never  bothers  about  wages  or  hours,  be- 
cause his  chief  fun  is  in  doing.  But  .  .  .  the 
president  who  thinks  that  his  company  exists 
mainly  to  supply  stock  quotations  is  in  exactly 
the  same  case  with  the  workman  who  looks  at 
his  day's  work  not  as  a  means  of  doing  some- 
thing, but  as  a  means  of  getting  money  with- 
out exertion. 


41 


A  Laboring  Nation  I 

"The  Baldwin  Locomotive  Works  is  something  i 
more  than  a  locomotive  building  plant — it  is 
an  institution.    For  some  time  past  Samuel  M. 
Vauclain  has  been  its  president,  but  for  twenty 
years  he  has  been  the  dominating  figure.  Mr. 
Vauclain  worked  his  way  up  from  an  apprentice 
in  the  Altoona  shops  of  the  Pennsylvania  Rail- 
road.   His  principal  joy  in  living  is  to  build 
locomotives.    He  reaches  his  office  somewhere 
around  seven  in  the  morning  and  leaves  between 
six  and  seven  in  the  evening,  although  sometimes 
he  will  work  eighteen  or  twenty  hours  at  a 
stretch.    He  has  never  taken  a  vacation,  be- 
cause he  never  could  find  anything  to  do  that 
would  give  him  as  much  fun  as  building  loco- 
motives.   He  has  never  bothered  with  personal 
finance,  and  he  further  told  me  that  he  had  not, 
for  fifteen  years,  known  what  his  own  salary 
was— he  said  that  he  did  not  have  time  to 
bother  with  money,  and  simply  had  the  com-  g 
pany  pay  his  salary  to  a  trust  company.    He  I 
knew  the  amount  could  not  help  being  large  ■ 
enough  because  he  was  doing  his  work,  and 
therefore  it  was  of  no  particular  use  to  bother 
about  it.    He  is  a  locomotive  builder.    He  will 
not  build  a  bad  locomotive  at  any  price.  A 
locomotive  leaving  those  shops  is  regarded  as 
tenderly  and  with  exactly  the  same  spirit  as  a 
sculptor  regards  a  finished  statue  going  out  of 
the  studio.    The  tradition  of  the  company  is: 
Good  work.    Every  man  in  that  place,  from 

42 


A  Laboring  Nation 

draughtsman  to  the  lowest  grade  of  mechanic, 
knows  that  Mr.  Vauclain  is  a  locomotive  expert 
from  any  angle.  .  .  .  He  is  their  natural 
leader.  They  honor  him  as  such.  Taking  his 
personal  example  they  resent  bad  work  as  bit- 
terly as  he  would  resent  it.  They  are  satisfied 
that  if  they  work  well  they  will  be  well  paid,  and 
they  always  are.  They  do  not  work  for  wages 
— they  create  locomotives."* 

Samuel  Vauclain  is  a  great  genius.  Perhaps 
not  every  employer  can  be  a  Vauclain  any  more 
than  every  one  who  plays  the  violin  can  be  a 
Kreisler.  But  if  he  is  going  to  do  anything, 
every  employer,  like  every  violinist,  has  got  to 
work  at  his  job.  And  the  truly  successful  man, 
no  matter  what  it  is  that  he  is  doing,  is  inter- 
ested in  his  work. 

''Creative  Work"  Nowadays 
We  often  hear  that  work  is  ''not  interesting 
nowadays."  There  are  never  lacking  people  to 
remind  us  that  "the  good  old  days"  of  personal 
handicraft,  several  centuries  ago,  offered  a 
"creative  interest"  that  is  gone  forever  now.  In 
a  sense,  thai  is  of  course  true.  It  is  not  so  inter- 
esting to  make  only  a  part  of  a  thing  as  it  is  to 
make  it  all.  It  does  not  seem  nearly  so  "crea- 
tive" to  work  by  machinery  as  to  work  by  hand. 
The  normal  human  instinct  for  work  is  all  of  a 
piece  with  the  normal  human  instinct  for  crea- 

*Samuel  Crowther,  "Common  Sense  and  Labor"  (Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.). 


43 


A  Laboring  Nation 

tion — for  making  something.     And  in  much 
industrial  work  nowadays  that  creative  instinct 
sees  no  satisfaction:  the  day's  work  is  not  an 
achievement,  but  a  task. 
"The  The  creative  instinct  sees  no  satisfaction,  we 

Creative  g^^^j  fo  a  Very  great  extent,  where  that  hap- 
iNSTiNCT"     p^^^^  j^^j^  ^£        employer,  manager, 

foreman.  For  the  satisfaction  is  there:  it  just 
has  to  be  pointed  out. 

In  some  ways,  it  is  true,  industrial  work  is 
less  interesting  than  it  was  a  few  centuries  ago. 
In  other  ways,  the  interest  is  not  less,  but  more. 

And  there  is  a  creative  satisfaction  just  the 

same.  . 

In  the  story  of  Mr.  Vauclain  and  the  Baldwm 
Locomotive  Works  we  saw  that  the  spirit  of 
that  great  plant  was  to  make  locomotives,  and 
that  for  everyone,  from  the  president  of  the 
company  to  every  worker  in  the  place,  making 
locomotives  was  a  tremendously  interesting  thing. 
Every  man  who  punched  a  hole  for  a  rivet  was 
doing  his  part  in  the  making  of  a  locomotive, 
that  great  powerful  panting  thing  that  not  even 
the  least  imaginative  person  in  the  world  could 
think  of  without  a  sense  of  life.  Suppose  a 
man  was  only  punching  holes  all  day.  He  was 
helping  to  create  a  locomotive,  none  the  less! 
His  interest  was  in  making  locomotives.  His 
pride  was  in  making  good  locomotives.  His 
ambition  was  that  his  part  in  the  creation  of  the 
thing  should  be  perfect  always.    And  every 

44 


A  Laboring  Nation 

locomotive  engine  that  his  hand  touched  was 
partly  his. 

No  matter  what  the  work  is — rolling  steel  "That 
into  plates  to  make  the  sides  of  automobiles,  ^m^'^ 
taking  part  in  the  giant's  cauldron  of  operations 
that  make  steel  itself,  making  stoves,  making 
lamps,  making  textiles — whatever  it  is,  the 
worker's  part  in  the  creation  of  the  thing  is 
present  still.  The  ''man  in  charge"  may  not 
take  the  trouble  to  remind  him  of  it.  The 
worker  may  not,  in  the  hurly-burly  of  a  great 
factory  or  mill  and  the  necessary  devotion  to  his 
one  operation,  catch  the  sense  of  the  whole, 
understand  the  creative  value  of  his  own  work. 
But  it  is  there;  the  creation  is  there;  the  pride 
is  there;  the  personal  joy  in  making,  that  is  an 
integral  part  of  man's  spiritual  life.  There's 
not  a  steel  worker  in  the  country  who  can  pass 
by  one  of  our  towering  sky-scrapers,  catch  sight 
of  one  of  our  beautiful  steamships,  listen  to  the 
roar  of  vibrant  life  as  one  of  our  great  locomotive 
engines  pulls  a  mail-train  at  a  mile  a  minute 
across  the  continent,  without  thinking,  ''That 
thing  is  mine!  Out  of  my  day's  work,  the  work 
of  my  hands  and  the  hands  of  my  comrades,  the 
work  of  all  who  labored  with  hand  or  brain  in 
the  making  of  steel,  came  that  thing  of  beauty 
and  wonder  and  power.  We  made  it.  To 
each  of  us  belongs  the  joy  of  its  miracle!" 

And  it  is  true,  every  time,  that  the  employer, 
the  "head  of  the  company,"  who  is  only  inter- 

45 


A  Laboring  Nation 

ested  in  making  money,  and  the  worker,  the 
wage-earner,  who  sees  nothing  in  his  job  beyond 
his  pay-envelope,  are  both  missing,  in  ignorance 
or  dull  inattention,  the  sheer  creative  satis- 
faction that  is  one  of  the  great  abiding  joys  of 
life.  Man  must  work— rich  man  or  poor— if 
he  is  going  to  be  a  self-respecting  member  of 
society  and  make  his  living  with  the  rest;  but 
if  he  only  works  to  "make  his  living,"  if  he  never 
looks  beyond  his  daily  task  to  its  final  signifi- 
cance, if  the  only  thing  that  interests  him  in  his 
job  is  the  money  it  brings  him — then  he  had 
better  open  his  eyes!  And  if,  as  possibly  in  the 
case  of  a  manual  worker  occupied  with  some  one 
detail,  he  does  not  quickly  see  for  himself  the 
creative  value  of  his  own  work,  then  someone 
ought  to  show  it  to  him. 

The  creative  value  is  still  here! 

And,  although  the  exact  interest  of  the  ancient 
days  of  hand-manufacture  is  gone  forever,  there 
is  a  new  interest  in  the  work  of  these  industrial 
days.  It  is  the  interest  in  the  machine,  and  in 
the  forces  that  work  through  the  machine  at  our 
command. 

Power  and  The  man  who  hammered  out  somethin  !,  m 
THE  mediieval  times,  with  his  own  hand  tools,  knew 

Machine  .^^      visible  hand  work.    He  never  knew 

the  joy  of  power  over  the  forces  that  work  in 
the  machine.  •    i  u 

It  is  we,  in  these  days  of  mechanical  tech- 
nique," of  "specialized"  work,  who  drive  elec- 

46 


A  Laboring  Nation 

tricity  at  our  bidding,  who  breathe  hke  a  flash 
the  melting  heat  of  a  tiny  gas  flame,  who  master 
giant  steam  engines  to  do  our  wiU  with  a  turn 
of  the  wrist.  We  hear  much  of  the  monotony 
of  machine  work — we  hear  Uttle  or  nothing  of 
its  romance.  Yet  the  power  of  this  matter-of- 
fact  day's  work  has  the  thriU  of  a  miracle.  And 
every  worker  in  every  factory,  in  every  mill,  in 
every  mine,  has  his  part  in  the  miracle's  daily 
operation.  The  ''interest"  gone  from  industry  ? 
The  interest  of  industry  was  never  greater! 

Rudyard  Kipling  has  a  poem  which  tells  how 
the  people  of  every  age  have  looked  back  regret- 
fully to  the  interest  and  romance  in  the  every- 
day life  of  the  age  before  them,  seeing  none  in 
their  own.  "Life  was  interesting,  romantic, 
vivid,  a  hundred  years  ago,"  they  complained. 
''Nowadays  everything  is  dull  and  prosaic  and 
utterly  stupid.  Everything  has  changed."  And 
so  the  men  and  women  of  each  succeeding  era 
sighed  for  the  "romance"  of  the  era  just  before 
them,  until  in  our  own  day  they  cried  out  that 
everything  that  was  interesting  and  beautiful 
and  wonderful  had  gone  out  of  man's  day -by- 
day  life.  And  then,  the  poem  says, 
"     .     .     .all  unseen 

Romance  brought  up  the  nine-fifteen. 

"His  hand  was  on  the  lever  laid. 

His  oil-can  soothed  the  worrying  cranks. 
His  whistle  waked  the  snowbound  grade, 


47 


A  Laboring  Nation 


His  fog-horn  cut  the  reeking  banks; 
By  dock  and  deep  and  mine  and  mill, 
The  Boy-god  reckless  laboured  still! 

"Robed,  crowned  and  throned,  he  wove  his  spell, 
Where  heart-blood  beat  or  hearth-smoke 
curled. 

With  unconsidered  miracle 

Hedged  in  a  backward-gazing  world; 
Then  taught  his  chosen  bard  to  say 
'The  King  was  with  us— yesterday !"'  * 

The  It's  all  so  true !    "The  King,"  as  the  poet  calls 

Romance  ^jjg  Spirit  of  wondcr  and  romance  that  makes 
OF  Work  ^.^^  interesting,  is  with  us  in  every  workshop,  in 
every  office,  today.  Manufacture,  commerce, 
the  making  of  things,  the  moving  of  trains— 
they  are  interesting,  marvelous  operations.  And 
doubtless  a  hundred  years  from  now  people  will 
look  back  to  the  vivid  days  when  a  man  m  a 
mine,  a  girl  in  a  lamp  factory,  a  manager  m  an 
office,  worked  with  or  directed  the  forces  of 
electricity  and  steam  and  gas  in  the  machines  of 
this  present  age,  and  compare  it  with  the  "dull- 
ness" of  whatever  changes  their  own  era  may 
have  brought! 

Whereas  the  truth  is  that  this  glory  of  wonder 
and  interest  is  always  a  part  of  man's  work, 
because  it  is  always  a  part  of  man's  spirit; 

♦From  "The  King,"  by  Rudyard  Kipling,  published  in  "The  Collected  Verse 
of  Rudyard  Kipling"  (Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.). 

48 


A  Laboring  Nation 

man  is  always  creating,  always  conquering, 
always  mastering.  Different  ages  have  their 
different  inventions.  Different  kinds  of  labor 
show  their  power  in  different  ways.  But  always 
the  thing  itself  is  there,  and  always  we  can  find  it 
and  thrill  to  it,  in  whatever  it  is  that  we  do. 
Man  is  always  the  maker,  the  conqueror, 
because  he  is  always  the  worker,  and  his  work  is 
always  mastery. 

And  always,  whether  he  is  directing  vast 
activities  as  the  president  of  a  great  corporation, 
or  attending  to  his  own  part  in  the  process  of 
manufacture,  as  a  manual  laborer,  he  is  a  worker 
among  his  fellows,  doing  work  that  is  necessary, 
that  is  powerful,  and  that,  in  the  very  nature  of 
industry  and  commerce  and  life  itself,  is  inter- 
esting and  great. 

For  work  ''produces  all" — the  work  of  every 
one  of  us! 


40 


This  is  the  fourteenth  booklet  of  a 
series.  Other  booklets  will  be  issued 
from  time  to  time. 

The  preceding  booklets  of  the  series 
as  Hsted  below  are  available: 

6.  Bolshevism  and  the  Workers. 

7.  Your  Vote  and  You. 

8.  Thrift. 

9.  Be  a  Capitalist. 

10.  Wages. 

11.  The  Excess  Profits  Tax. 

12.  The  Labor  State. 


THE  CAXTON  COMPANY 
CLEVELAND 


/ 


